- Trump
officials defend audacious military operation on Capitol Hill. - Forcible
capture of sitting head of state from capital. - Top
administration figures arrived this morning to testify.
All 100 US senators were briefed on Operation Absolute
Resolve, the lightning raid that took Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from
his Caracas home and placed him in a New York City jail cell, by Secretary of
State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi,
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of
staff.
The attack on January 3rd, in which US special soldiers from
Delta Force swooped into Venezuela before dawn to capture Maduro and his wife,
Cilia Flores, is being discussed for the first time by the entire Senate.
Rubio told reporters that he presented lawmakers with a
three-pronged approach to Venezuela that centered on oil: first, stabilization
of the nation.
Aside from oil, the operation has created predictable
divisions in Washington. Trump’s description of the raid as a simple law
enforcement operation to apprehend an accused drug trafficker has garnered
support from Republicans. Democrats warn of an unlawful act of war that could
destabilize Venezuela and create a risky precedent for presidential action
taken unilaterally.
“What we did is we took out an illegitimate president,”
the Republican senator Markwayne Mullin said
after the briefing.
“He was never duly elected, so there can’t be regime
change if he should have never been put in place to begin with.”
Early on Saturday morning, special operations forces attacked
several locations in northern Venezuela, apprehended Maduro and Flores from
their residence, transported them to the USS Iwo Jima, transported them to the
Stewart Air National Guard facility, and finally transported them to New York.
A few days later, Maduro appeared in US court and entered a not guilty plea on
charges of guns, cocaine importation, and “narco-terrorism”
conspiracy resulting from a 2020 indictment.
The public’s general discomfort with the operation is
reflected in the push. According to a Washington Post poll published on Sunday,
over six out of ten Americans think it should have needed congressional
approval. Roughly 75% of respondents to a different Reuters/Ipsos study are
worried that the US will get too involved in Venezuela. According to a Reuters
survey, roughly one-third of respondents support the operation, one-third
oppose it, and one-third are unsure, reflecting the party divide on Capitol
Hill.
“Across America, people are just saying what the hell is
going on?”
the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said.
“We need answers as to how long this is going to last. We
need answers to how many troops, how much money, are there guardrails, things
we don’t do, and a number of things that we had talked about were very
troubling.”
However, it’s still uncertain what will happen in Venezuela
next. Trump has stated that the United States will “run” the nation
for an indeterminate amount of time, and he has permitted Delcy Rodríguez, the
country’s hand-picked and alleged Maduro loyalist vice president, to continue
in a leadership capacity for the time being.
There has been quick international censure. The operation
has been condemned by Brazil, Chile, China, France, Iran, Mexico, Russia, and
Spain. While the US characterized the action as targeted law enforcement,
Chinese and Russian delegates at the UN Security Council on Sunday called for
Maduro’s immediate release.
In the sake of national security, Republican politicians and
US authorities are also focusing on Greenland.
Trump has maintained a naval squadron off the coast of
Venezuela, and the US Coast Guard detained two oil ships connected to Venezuela
this morning in separate operations, indicating that the administration has no
intention of reducing pressure on the dictatorship.
“Our military is prepared to continue this,”
Hegseth told reporters.
“The president, when he speaks, he means it. He’s not
messing around, we are an administration of action to advance our interests,
and that is on full display.”
What legal justification did the administration present for
the operation?
The Trump administration justified Operation Absolute
Resolve as a law enforcement action under Composition II powers, targeting
criminated narcoterrorists Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores on US medicine
trafficking charges without taking congressional authorization.
Officers like Marco Rubio cited presidential authority for
extraterritorial apprehensions, drawing on a 1989 William Barr memo from the
Panama Noriega operation asserting that similar raids indeed involving military
force fall under essential commander- in- principal powers and do n’t violate
UN Charter Article 2( 4) asnon-self-executing, framing it as police action
rather than war.
They invoked the 2001 AUMF against terrorism for Maduro’s
Tren de Aragua links and public security pitfalls from Venezuelan oil painting-
funded smuggling, rejecting corruption markers amid critics’ claims of lacking
statutory base or tone- defense under transnational law.
